Portable electronic devices such as smartphones, smartwatches, other wearables, and tablets are ever more popular in the world today. Certain functions of these devices depend on the device having knowledge of the device's orientation, or of conditions of the environment in which the device currently resides. For example, a smartphone may rotate its user interface from a portrait view to a landscape view based upon the orientation in which the smartphone is held. As another example, a smartwatch may activate its display or alter the brightness of its display based upon the orientation in which the smartwatch is held, or based upon the light in the environment in which the smartwatch resides, respectively. Such portable electronic devices may also log the physical activity of a user. For example, a smartphone or smartwatch may count the number of steps taken by a user.
In order to determine the orientation of the device or conditions of the environment in which the device resides, sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes are employed. Typically, the electronic device includes a system on chip (SOC) that receives raw data from the sensors, and then determines the device orientation or conditions of the environment.
While this approach is effective and enables the electronic device to perform commercially desirable functions, the constant acquisition of data from the sensors by the SOC can result in higher than desirable power consumption. The lowering of power consumption is a continual commercial desire for such electronic devices. Therefore, hardware and techniques for allowing the continual acquisition of the sensor data while reducing power consumption are desirable.